Intravenous infusion therapy is prescribed where it is desirable to administer medications and other fluids directly into the circulatory system of a patient. Without alerts that warn the clinician that a higher or lower dose than clinical practice intended is being programmed, the resulting amount delivered to the patient can lead to increased morbidity or be fatal. There are various types of infusion pumps used by medical personnel to infuse medicinal fluids into a patient's body. There are very few pumps that have the feature of drug dose programming alerts. Some pumps use a customized drug library for electronically downloadable drug pumps. For example U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,340, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, describes a system and computer readable medium for developing and downloading a customized drug library from a personal computer (PC) into an erasable, electronically loadable memory within the housing of a syringe pump. However, prior art systems and infusion pumps have several drawbacks. Following is a description of a novel infusion pump system that solves various problems found in the prior art.